CLOMA AND Bennie walked with him as Jared answered the bell to board the bus. To Jared the shrill clanging seemed to be an ominous forewarning of impending doom. It was as if some pagan temple bell were tolling him away so that his wife and unborn child could be sacrificed to a god of the fields he could not accept or comprehend. He wanted desperately not to go, to stay and share with Cloma the agony and joy of this thing they had created together, this intimate moment of love they had shared in the past which would soon produce life. He knew this desire was hopeless, so he consoled himself with the thought that perhaps he would return to Angel City before the time of the birth.
When they reached the bus, he kissed Cloma and cautioned Bennie to look after her as best he could; then he turned away from them quickly and stepped into the dark interior of the old vehicle. As they passed through the gate and moved slowly along the dirt road, he looked back and could see Cloma and Bennie standing alone beneath the floodlight on the east end of the building.
The sky was overcast that morning, and dawn did not come until they reached the northern outskirts of Homestead. Jared looked through the grimy window and watched the houses and the vegetable stands and the fields flow by. The fields were now empty and forlorn, resting until the next day when hordes of pickers would swarm over them like locusts.
A few miles north of Homestead, Jared thought he recognized the spot beside the highway where they had stopped to let the van’s radiator cool on the day they arrived in Homestead. He remembered the lunch of sausage and crackers and hot Coke, and the conversations about the fruit stand and the ocean and fishing and bathing suits and things to come. He knew now that all those dreams they had talked about were only dreams, and they had been washed away like a sandcastle in a mountain stream.
They soon passed the junction of Highway 27 and the Tamiami Trail, and continued north on Highway 27. Jared passed the time by looking out of the window constantly, watching the people and the cars and the houses and the groves and the vast stretches of sawgrass at places where the Everglades swooped in and touched the edge of the highway. He also saw migrant camps which were in even worse condition than Angel City, rotten wooden shacks on stilts and unpainted concrete block barracks with bare yards and naked children and junked cars and trash and beer cans and people with hopeless faces looking out of broken windows, watching the flow of traffic along the highway.
When they reached Andytown, a light rain was falling, and the sky far in the north was a solid wall of black. “Cold front movin’ in,” Cy said to Jared. “It rain hard ‘nough we won’t be able to pick, then ale Creedy’ll blow out his flue fo’ sho’.”
For several miles north of Andytown the highway cut through another section of the Everglades; then they reached the beginning of the vast areas of the sugar cane farms, fields of solid cane that stretched to and beyond the horizon and dwarfed even the largest tomato fields Jared had seen around Angel City. He looked in wonder at the soil, which was as black as thick layers of soot, and was puzzled by smoke boiling upwards from walls of fire stretching across the land.
Cy watched Jared with amusement, then he said, “They bumin’ the cane fields befo’ the cane’s cut. Bums off the leaves an’ trash. Most o’ the cane’s cut by voodoo niggers.”
“What’s voodoo niggers?” Jared questioned.
“Niggers from the islands. Pickers won’t cut no cane lessen they ain’t nothin’ nowhere to pick an’ they has to. It’s too hard work. But them men they brings here from down at Jamaica swings them heavy machetes like they was made o’ paper. You ain’t never seen nothin’ like how them niggers can go down a row o’ cane.”
Jared continued to stare at the endless fields. He asked, “You ever cut any?”
“I done it some, but I sho’ don’t like to. I’d ruther pick a thousand buckets of ‘maters than spend a day in the cane.”
“I don’t see how they ever get it all chopped,” Jared said.
“You would if you knowed how many men they puts out there in them fields at one time. All you can see is voodoo niggers swingin’ them big blades.”
It was just before noon when the old bus ambled into South Bay. Here the highway skirted the south shore of Lake Okeechobee. To the left were Bean City and Lake Harbor and Clewiston and Moore Haven; to the right, Belle Glade and Pahokee. The bus turned to the right.
Two miles out of South Bay the bus left the highway and followed a dirt road flanking a drainage canal on the right and a cane field on the left. A mile down the road they came to a clump of Australian pines. Just as Jabbo parked the bus beneath the trees, a solid sheet of rain poured down on them.
The pounding rain lasted for more than two hours, and the men sat in the bus in silence. No mention was made of food, and Jared’s stomach rumbled as he wondered when they would be given something to eat. When the rain finally stopped, they got off the bus and wandered around the small area beneath the trees.
It was late in the afternoon when the Mark IV pulled up beside the bus. Creedy got out and had a lengthy conversation with Jabbo. He opened the trunk of the car, took out a cardboard box and sat it on the ground; then he got back into the car and drove off.
The box contained cans of sardines and beans and loaves of white bread. Jabbo gave each man a can of each and two slices of bread. Jared and Cy sat on a bed of wet pine needles and ate from the cans with their fingers. Jared said, “Where’ll we stay tonight? Does Creedy have a camp up here too?”
“We in his camp now,” Cy said, drinking the oil from the sardine can. “You can sleep on the ground or in the bus.”
There was no water except that in the nearby drainage canal, and it was covered with green slime and had a foul odor. Jared drank just enough to wash the food down his throat.
Some of the men gathered wet firewood which they coaxed into burning, but the wet wood produced more smoke than warmth. The temperature dropped rapidly as the wind became stronger and made a mournful wailing sound as it rushed through the thick limbs of the pines. Jared went into the bus and got a blanket he had brought with him. He draped it around his shoulders and sat as close to the weak fire as possible, but even this didn’t help. His body shivered with cold as he got up and went back into the bus, and finally he fell asleep on the seat with Cy huddled close against him.